The 2025 Mission Report for Fondazione con il Sud and the Social Report for Con i bambini are now available online at www.bilanciodimissione.it. The reports provide a comprehensive overview of the activities, projects, and calls for proposals supported throughout the year. Both documents are fully interactive on the dedicated website, designed for seamless navigation and content sharing
Since its establishment (2007–2025), Fondazione con il Sud has awarded 2,035 grants worth more than EUR 335.5 million. It has launched more than 1,900 initiatives across Southern Italy, including the creation of the first seven community foundations in Southern Italy (in Naples’ Historic Center and in Rione Sanità in Naples, Salerno, Benevento, Messina, the Val di Noto, and Agrigento-Trapani), involving 7,600 different organizations, including non-profits and public and private entities. In 2025 alone, the Foundation supported 114 new initiatives with more than EUR 17 million in funding.
The 2025 fiscal year closed with an operating surplus of approximately EUR 37.8 million. The overall allocation of resources for 2025 amounts to EUR 20.5 million, drawn directly from this operating surplus.
For the 2025–2027 three-year period, Fondazione con il Sud has identified demographic regeneration as its top strategic priority and published the ‘Riabitare il Sud’ (Repopulating the South) call for proposals in 2025. The image chosen for the Foundation’s 2025 Mission Report comes from ‘Sud Vivo’ (The South Is Alive), the national participatory communication campaign dedicated to the depopulation issue, launched in June, in the same year marking the Foundation’s twentieth anniversary.
Depopulation affects the whole country, but it is especially pronounced in Southern Italy, and not only in inland areas but in cities and coastal towns as well. The numbers speak for themselves: since 2001, the South has lost 730,000 people, and by 2080 it risks losing 8 million more. We are not just losing numbers; we are losing graduates, energy, creativity, and social bonds. Faced with this scenario, shaped by declining birth rates, emigration, and an aging population, we have two paths ahead: resign ourselves to a decline that seems already written, or join forces to change course.
There are no magic formulas and no single solution. We must work across every dimension of regeneration to make Southern Italy, and Italy as a whole, a place where it is possible to imagine a future. We need a new, shared vision and a strong response against resignation; we cannot leave mayors to face this alone, nor adults, seniors, and young people without any credible prospects. No one can do it alone.
The ‘Sud Vivo’ campaign was created for exactly this reason: to break down the wall of isolation and build alliances, not only in Southern Italy but, above all, ‘with’ Southern Italy, working in the spirit of national cohesion. ‘Sud Vivo’ campaign The campaign’s goal is to build a new public narrative around depopulation, highlighting the actions already underway for the South’s demographic, social, cultural, and economic regeneration. The intent is to move from a narrative of resignation to one of possibility, surfacing and connecting experiences, proposals, and local initiatives that offer tangible, even if incremental, contributions to reversing the trend.
The campaign is open to everyone. We invite institutions, municipalities, businesses, foundations, and third-sector organizations to join as partners, and we invite citizens and young people to share ‘collective stories’ on what it means to be born in, stay in, return to, or move to Southern Italy.
